


Relapse

by musicat



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Depression, Eating Disorders, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-21 03:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3676275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicat/pseuds/musicat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was never about weight. It was about control. (Eren reflects on his past with an eating disorder and how he overcame it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relapse

**Author's Note:**

> I was struggling today. This is my personal experience, but modified to Eren. I think this might be a trigger for some people, so please be careful. (It was actually a trigger for me too so I avoided some words I would've used otherwise.)

He's okay now. But he wasn't always.

Eren doesn't remember how it started exactly, which is strange considering how much it affected his life.

He wouldn't consider himself depressed. But every few weeks, for just a day or two, he'd feel miserable for no reason. Once, he went to take a shower, and he found himself almost sobbing as the water ran down his face, but he didn't know why he was crying. Then he got out, dried off, and that was it. It was rare, so he never felt the need to address it. He'd also get similar spells of hyperactivity, where he couldn't stop himself when talking to his friends. Anything and everything he thought of would come out of his mouth whether he meant to say it or not. 

His family wasn't bad or mean. They'd get into fights, but that was normal. Actually, what bothered him was the detachment. They weren't a close family. Neither Mikasa nor his father were particularly affectionate. His friend had joked that they seemed more like roommates than a family, and he couldn't disagree. 

He wasn't suicidal either. Though he didn't particularly enjoy life, he didn't desire death. He had obsessive thoughts about jumping in front of speeding cars, but he didn't want to die. He thinks maybe his mind was just messed up. Maybe that's why he started.

He does remember one time when he felt sick. He felt so much like throwing up, but it wasn't happening, and he didn't want to spend the day feeling that way.

It felt awful, but afterwards he was also relieved. That wasn't what started it, though.

It was never about weight, strangely enough. He looks fine. If anything, he had already been slightly underweight.

He associates it with control instead. The power he has to choose what to eat and when to eat it is a comfort when compared to the frustration he feels about his life. He always felt so out-of-touch, like nothing he did mattered. Nothing he did made anything better.

Before he realized it, he was counting calories. He found that 2000 was a normal day, then suddenly before he knew it he had pushed it down to 1500, then down to 1000, and down to just under 300. Why? He doesn't really know. But it felt good, in a way he couldn't fully describe.

If Mikasa knew, she would've been so upset and angry. He was lucky (or he had thought he was). Family dinners had grown awkward around the time it started. It was filled with silence or stilted conversation about school. It became ritual for Mikasa and him to eat alone in their rooms or out with friends. At home he'd fill his plate enough to look normal, then after about a half an hour he'd scrape it all away into the trash can in his room. It would be suspicious if his food was missing five minutes after he got it. Sometimes he'd toss it in a smaller plastic bag so that his room wouldn't smell for the period between when he took out his trash. Luckily, this didn't happen often. His father was usually not home, so they were responsible for their own meals. (He would feel guilty if he threw away every meal.) At school he had a free period and would get out of school an hour earlier. Mikasa didn't always hang out with him.

“Where's your lunch?” his friends had asked once or twice.

He'd explain his shorter schedule. “I like to go home and eat lunch after,” he'd lie. “Cafeteria food sucks,” he jokes. And that was that. Easy. No one really cared. He wasn't the “type” so it probably never crossed his mind. He's not sure. If it did, they never said anything.

Binge and purge cycles didn't happen as often. He had ruined his appetite. (He had lost his taste for food; he would feel his stomach grumble but he never craved anything like how he heard people say that they'd kill for a steak.) But once in a while he'd find that he had eaten a whole bag of chips without realizing it.

It left his throat stinging and his eyes watering.

Sometimes he did it even though he hadn't eaten anything. He thinks maybe that's why he suffers nausea in the morning now. He can't be bothered to eat until lunchtime now.

He remembers that during the time, though he didn't think what he was doing was good, it also wasn't bad. It helped. He could pretend everything was okay, and that's all other people cared about. Who cared why? So his way of coping and dealing with his emotions were different. It worked. He regrets it now so much, but at the time, it was okay. He was okay.

Now when he says it, he's more honest. He's not always okay, but he's better. "Okay" honestly means okay now, instead of like before when he wasn't but pretended to be. 

No one found out. He never talked about it to anyone. There wasn't someone that magically saved him. One day, he just realized in the bathroom that what he was doing was awful. He couldn't keep doing it forever. His life was tied around food (or the lack of) and he really wasn't alright with that. He thought it was about control. Yet when he took a step back and thought about it, he really didn't have any control.

It was difficult. When he was stressed out, he'd feel like throwing up, but he had to stop himself from doing anything. He tried to eat normal meals but he found that he couldn't eat as much as before now. He couldn't force it because then it'd cause him to feel nauseous and trigger an episode. He relapsed a few times. But now his life didn't revolve around it.

He can't watch scenes that involve vomiting. He turns away, queasy. He still catches himself looking at food, and he can estimate the calories in his head.

The urge doesn't go away. Maybe it's because he has no one to consult, maybe because now it's just a part of him. He doesn't know, but at the moment he doesn't think it's important. What's important is that he breaks the cycle. 

It's been two years. (He relapsed once three months ago but he doesn't consider it the same).

He's okay.


End file.
